CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?

Scott Pelley Reports On The CIA'S Rendition Program

(CBS)  El-Masri says he was injected with drugs, and after his flight, he woke up in an American-run prison in Afghanistan. He showed 60 Minutes a prison floor plan he drew from memory. He says other prisoners were from Pakistan, Tanzania, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. El-Masri told 60 Minutes that he was held for five months and interrogated by Americans through an interpreter.

"He yelled at me and he said that, 'You're in a country without laws and no one knows where you are. Do you know what that means?' I said yes," says el-Masri. "It was very clear to me that he meant I could stay in my cell for 20 years or be buried somewhere, and nobody knows what happened to you."

He says they were asking him "whether I had contacts with Islamic parties like al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or aid organizations, lots of questions."

He says he told the Americans he'd never been involved in militant Islam. El-Masri says he wasn't tortured, but he says he was beaten and kept in solitary confinement. Then, after his five months of questioning, he was simply released.

At that point, did anyone ever tell him that they'd made a mistake? "They told me that they had confused names and that they had cleared it up, but I can't imagine that," says el-Masri. "You can clear up switching names in a few minutes."

He says he was flown out of Afghanistan and dumped on a road in Albania. When he finally made his way back home to Germany, he found that his wife and kids had gone to her family in Lebanon. He called there to explain what happened.

El-Masri says that his wife believed him: "I never lied to her, and my appearance showed that I had been in prison."

How did he explain what happened to him to his son? "I explained to him what happened to me. And he understood," says el-Masri. "I said it was the Americans [who did this to me]."

"How do you know if you're picking up the right people," Pelley asked Scheuer.

"You do the best you can. It's not a science," says Scheuer. "It's gathering as much information as you can, deciding on the quality of it and then determining the risks the person poses. If you make a mistake, you make a mistake."

There's another destination that 60 Minutes noticed frequently in the plane's flight logs: Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, a predominately Muslim country, with a reputation for torture.

Craig Murray is the former British ambassador there. He told 60 Minutes that Uzbek citizens, captured in Afghanistan, were flown back to Taskent on the American plane.

"I know of two instances for certain of prisoners who were brought back in a small jet, and I believe it was happening on a reasonably regular basis," says Murray.

Murray says the jet was operated by Premiere Executive Airlines.
He says in Uzbekistan, many prisoners are subject to torture techniques straight out of the Middle Ages: "Techniques of drowning and suffocation, rape was used quite commonly, and also immersion of limbs in boiling liquid."

Murray complained to his superiors that British intelligence was using information gleaned by torture. He was recalled by London four months ago and quit the foreign service.

Is there any reason to believe that the CIA knows that people are being tortured in these jails?

"The CIA definitely knows. I asked my deputy to go and speak to the CIA, and she came back and reported to me that she'd met with the CIA head of station, who told her that 'Yes, this material probably was obtained under torture, but the CIA didn't see that a problem.'"

The CIA disputes that. The agency told 60 Minutes that the meeting Murray described didn't happen. The CIA also says it does not knowingly receive intelligence obtained by torture.

President Bush, in a January interview with The New York Times, said: "Torture is never acceptable." He added, "nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture."

Scheuer says, in his experience, the United States asks receiving countries to promise that suspects will be treated according to the laws of that country. "I'm not completely confident that any of the information received was exacted by torture," says Scheuer.

In Egypt?

"In Egypt. Again, I think we have people in the Middle East in the various services we deal with who are extraordinarily experienced in debriefing people," says Scheuer.

"I personally think that any information gotten through extreme methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would be someone telling you what you wanted to hear. The information we have received as a result of these programs has been very useful to the United States."

"And if some of that useful information is gleaned by torture, that's OK," asks Pelley.

"It's OK with me," says Scheuer. "I'm responsible for protecting Americans."

Scheuer says in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and in Congress, details of rendition flights were known to top officials. Now that the missions are coming to light, Scheuer says there is worry in the CIA that field agents will take the fall if any of the missions are later deemed illegal.

Are CIA people feeling vulnerable to that?

"I think from the first day we ever did it there was a certain macabre humor that said sooner or later this sword of Damocles is gonna fall because if something goes wrong, the policy maker and the politicians and the congressional committees aren't gonna belly up to the bar and say, 'We authorized this,'" says Scheuer.